My mom loves to clean. Really and truly. She finds catharsis in wiping down baseboards and vacuuming straight lines into faded carpet. My friend Ana cleans without even realizing it. She could no more fall asleep with dirty dishes in her sink than she could leave a suitcase packed after returning from a trip. I am not like these people. I love things to be clean, but I do not like to clean them. I very much want my house to be organized, but I don't want to organize it. As I type, I am sitting next to my "Craft Case" - a bookcase I filled with all of the supplies for my brand new etsy shop (which is getting about as much attention as this blog is). Several months ago I carefully filled it with canvas and craft paper, modge podge and hope. Now I'm trying to find the energy and time to overhaul the whole thing and move it somewhere the kids can't find it. So why don't things stay organized? Why do I have to "fix" anything more than once? Because that's hard. And I want to be lazy. And that's really all this is...this whole blog is going to be dedicated to describing all the work I am going to do to get things running so well that I can finally be lazy. Give me advice. Wish me luck.

Welcome to my blog. My name is Elle (ok, that’s not really my name, it’s actually my first initial. But since my goal with this blog is to be helpful, not famous, or even sort-of famous, I figured I’d go by Elle. Plus that name makes me feel kind of like a supermodel, so I’m going to roll with it. While you’re imagining me as Elle, also imagine me 5’11” with long, dark wavy hair, hazel eyes and a slightly crooked smile. And the kind of metabolism I had in 7th grade). I have a spouse, two kids (ages 1 and 3 as of this post) and two dogs. We are busy, noisy and messy. Really messy. The thing about me is that I tend to work really hard with lazy aspirations. I am on an eternal quest to make things easier, to the point that I sometimes work way harder to find an “easy” solution than it would take to just do the work in the first place. So, I thought that you all might benefit from the fruit of my labors. I’ll share the solutions and save you the trouble of the trial runs. Does that help? You tell me. I’d love to hear from you.